Why, through it all, is Anderson Silva still such a big deal in Brazil? Brazilian journalists try to explain

Of all the questions I commonly get asked about Brazil – including, but not limited to “What do you mean peanut butter is not really a thing in your country?” – there’s one that seems to keep reappearing: Is Anderson Silva still a big deal down there?

My answer to that is always an unflinching, unequivocal, straightforward yes.

See? That was easy. The part where I start struggling is when they ask me why. Not why Silva (34-8 MMA, 17-4 UFC) became what he did back when he was still that mythical, seemingly unbeatable creature. But rather why I’m so quick to answer yes now, three and a half years after he lost the UFC’s middleweight belt, with a long injury layoff, a doping suspension, a couple more losses and, as of Saturday, a suspicious decision call in between.

Unlike what MMA Twitter seems to sometimes think, I am, unfortunately, not the sole voice of the entire nation of Brazil – at least not until my totalitarian takeover is complete. So I recruited a few of my colleagues to try to make some sense of the issue and hopefully shed some light as to why it is that the pull of “The Spider” that seems to transcend defeat (of all natures), even in a country known for its victory-driven mentality.

Silva fights are happenings, like a Rolling Stones concert

The most interesting analogy came from a friend who, curiously enough, is not a part of the MMA world at all. In fact, he kind of hates it. Marvio dos Anjos (no relation to the former lightweight champ, you nerds) is a longtime reporter, writer and columnist who now runs the sports section of major national newspaper O Globo. Dos Anjos, who’s always taken an open-minded approach to MMA in spite of his personal distaste, thinks watching Silva has evolved into the kind of thing you do even if to talk on Facebook about it. It’s like attending, say, a Rolling Stones concert.

“The band may not be as relevant as it once was, but if they come here to play, it’s a happening,” Dos Anjos said. “It’s like when you do the sign of the horns because you’re about to listen to ‘Satisfaction.’ That’s what Anderson Silva is.”

In his view, a Silva fight is no longer about wins and losses – rather symbolic, in fact, that he knew he’d fought the night before, but had to confirm the outcome with me – but yet about the feeling of it being can’t-miss event. As someone who sees the sport from outside, he thinks “Anderson Silva remains a synonym of MMA in Brazil,” which still rings true long past his invincible stage because “we always believe our ‘kings of the sport’ will get a chance to reclaim their crowns.”

To him, Silva is a “novela” we want to keep watching, which in part has to do with the dynamics of how business is currently conducted.

“On the other hand, the dynamics of MMA, which has countless events week after week without the exact nothing that SOMETHING important is happening, dilutes the importance of other fighters in other weights,” Dos Anjos said. “There’s no time for them to establish themselves as a brand. We keep coming back to Anderson, (Vitor) Belfort and (Jose Aldo).”

Despite some hard times, ‘The Spider’ still a massive draw

Another good friend of mine, this time one who shares our weird obsession with half-naked people fighting each other in cages, provided some more tangible evidence of Silva’s everlasting allure. Jorge Correa, one of the sports editors of major Brazilian website UOL, has been in charge of its MMA coverage for over a half-decade and has been closely reporting on Silva since 2009.

“(Silva’s) bad phase didn’t drive away the audience, which kept the same level as the golden times, like when he beat Stephan Bonnar or first lost to Chris Weidman,” Correa said. “In fact, of the five most read news (stories) in all of UOL on Sunday, three were related to Silva’s fight.

“In this interim, only two Brazilian fighters managed some relevance, but still very distant from Anderson Silva as far as readership goes: Jose Aldo and Vitor Belfort. Not even Junior Dos Santos, Rafael dos Anjos and Fabricio Werdum, back when they were champions, came close to ‘Spider.'”

Correa, who was still emotionally recovering from the avalanche of angry readers pleading for his job to be taken away after he dared to publicly say he thought Silva was outpointed by Brunson, alluded to something that everyone I spoke to can agree on: Anderson Silva was absolutely key for the MMA boom in Brazil, marked by the resurgence in interest following the Silva vs. Belfort clash at UFC 126.

If it wasn’t for Silva’s popularity, he argues, there would be no “The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil,” no “UFC Rio” in 2011, and there wouldn’t be a UFC office in Sao Paulo. All of this, he explains, is because “of something peculiar to the Brazilian people’s sports culture: Excluding soccer, fans around here don’t like sports – they like winners.”

That is not a controversial statement in Brazil at all. It’s a sentence we commonly repeat in sports circles. And that’s where it really gets interesting. In spite of our apparent attachment to victories, Correa mentioned that non-champion Silva coverage remained more impacting than coverage of other Brazilian champions at the time of their reigns. And that holds true for news outlets, as well.

It’s hard for an outsider to understand what it means when Globo, Brazil’s biggest network channel, uses its premium time during “Fantastico,” one of its longest-running shows and a constant ratings leader on Sunday nights, to give what at that point were somewhat meaningless live updates every few minutes minutes from outside Silva’s hospital after his horrific broken leg. The same show would go on to run a long, heavily advertised chat with a still-in-crutches Silva talking about his trauma.

Or the amount of TV time that mostly soccer-focused SporTV, the Globo-owned sports-only cable channel that also beats its competition by a landslide, dedicated to Silva’s career happenings – doping scandal included. I know because I worked there for some of it. I know because I produced countless Silva-related stories and had to scramble to be able to distribute the content of our sparse one-on-ones between all the interested shows.

I know because, though I joined the channel after Silva’s loss to Weidman, if there’s one interview that I could sell to almost any show, regardless of how its editor felt personally about MMA, it was Silva. We have current champions in Jose Aldo and Amanda Nunes. They both get prime TV time and exposure. Hell, Aldo even got his own movie – a real one, not a basement production shot on an iPhone – which, in turn, became a series at Globo. He’s huge, too.

But Silva seems to be in a league of his own when it comes to the general audience. Feel free to confirm that with my pompous, erudite grandma, who twists her nose at anything non-French. The only things she knows about MMA is that it ruined my life and that there’s an Anderson Silva character involved.

Silva remains big even though he’s no longer a champion

One friend who provided exceptional insight was Marcelo Russio, the editor of Combate.com – the MMA-dedicated portion of the major Globoesporte.com portal. Combate currently is the major source for MMA-related breaking news in Brazil and by far the one with the most dedicated, all-day coverage to the sport around here.

Russio agrees with Correa and me when we say Brazilian fans in general appreciate winning more than they do sports. The twist with Anderson, he says, is that he managed to surpass that.

“The difference (from when he was champion) is that today, there’s a split in expectations: Some want to go back to seeing the brawl operas conducted by maestro ‘Spider,’ while others have their eyes glued to the TV, hungry for the blow that will break his mythical aura even further,” Russio said. “For the Americans reading this, this is proof that Brazil, and Brazilians, are not for beginners. Our logic can’t be taught in a handful of lines and letters.

“Anderson Silva remains a needle mover when it comes to audience, online or TV. No fighter pushes numbers like he does. Fighting at 3 a.m., he gives ratings in double digits, and goes past the million mark in online measurements. One of the only certainties when Anderson fights is that he’ll be a topic in every conversation group in Brazil the next day. Some will celebrate his wins, others his losses. He just doesn’t go ignored.”

To Russio, the fact Silva doesn’t really conform to the “good guy” trope turned him into a particularly interesting character. As idolized and admired as he is, Russio explains, he’s also heavily criticized and rooted against. That may go against what some people think abroad, that Anderson is this higher-than-God creature whom fans will defend blindly until the end of time.

To clarify, in Brazil, that would be Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira.

For Russio, it’s quite the opposite with Silva: His polarizing nature is part of his mystique. Which, of course, wouldn’t have mattered had he not put on impressive displays inside the octagon as well. At the end of the day, Russio is not shy about putting Silva atop “the Olympus of Brazilian sports, next to Pele, Ayrton Senna and Gustavo Kuerten.”

“It’s not an exaggeration to say he’s more popular than the biggest idols in soccer, Brazil’s true official religion,” Russio concluded. “And to cite only two of them, Neymar and Pele, they have already called themselves Silva fans. That’s no small feat.”

And that brings us to this past Saturday’s UFC 208, when Anderson Silva got, albeit controversially, his first official win since 2012. It was not a main-event fight. No title, revenge or particular brand of glory was on the line for him. His opponent, Derek Brunson, is hardly a name that registers with Brazilian fans. Still, when Globo aired the final portion of the event, with a 30-minute delay, it boosted its ratings. Still, Globo’s biggest daily news show, Jornal Nacional, ran a story on him the day before his fight.

A title was on the line with Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie fighting for the UFC’s inaugural women’s 145-pound belt, but it’s not a stretch to say that Silva, even with his theoretically unremarkable fight, was the biggest star of fight week. And the narrative around his appointment seemed to lean a lot less toward the regular “How are you going to beat him?” than to his legacy, his aspirations and his state of mind.

Silva is MMA’s biggest draw in Brazil – by a longshot

I spoke to longtime MMA reporter and producer Ana Hissa, who, alongside SporTV reporter and host Vanessa Riche, trailed Silva all week to produce a fight week diary (yes, that’s how interested people were) and bring updated news about both Silva and Ronaldo Souza. Hissa has become somewhat of an MMA superstar in Brazil herself – and I’m not just saying that because I’ve actually had people stop me in public places to ask me if I was her – for her relentless (and often sleepless) coverage of the sport since 2008.

Safe to say, she’s not only seen a lot of MMA but has also developed a good sense for what makes people pay attention. I asked her if the interest in Silva, especially when dealing with people who don’t follow the sport closely, is still bigger than with other fighters.

“He’s waaaaaaaaaaaay above,” she said, although I must admit I didn’t really count all the A’s – I just know there were a lot of them.

Hissa believes that the legend of Silva not only survived the adversities he faced throughout his storied career, but somehow grew from them.

“Because he’s one of the best fighters of all time, and especially due to his genius moves, his showmanship, Anderson makes people curious,” Hissa said. “Even more after going through all the adversity since the defeat, the injury, the doping. The Brazilians mobilize, identify themselves, want to know what’s going to happen, which Anderson is going to perform, what’s his future – from the MMA fanatic to the casual fan.

“No wonder we just had one of our biggest coverages in his return to the octagon now. We followed his day-to-day from his departure from Brazil and the interest and repercussions were huge. I think, regardless of standings, rankings, or anything else, Anderson Silva will always be a giant when we talk about MMA in Brazil.”

Whether Hissa’s prediction will hold true remains to be seen. But the evidence is compelling. It’s clear that Silva – whether it’s of the winning, losing, or suspended variety – remains a subject that newspapers, websites and TV channels have every interest in talking about. That is both a consequence and a cause of the fact that, regardless of if it’s to see him rise to the top again or to be once more taken down, fans are still eager to consume Silva-related coverage.

So, yes, Anderson Silva is still a pretty big deal. The reasons are complex, but, when it’s all said and done, don’t they seem a little beside the point?